science and image Merian’s metamorphoses

Nurtured from an early age in the art of still-life painting and naturalistic illustration, the courageous seventeenth- century artist Maria Sibylla Merian allied her vision and her skills to convey the complex life-cycles of insects.

Martin Kemp or a 52-year-old painter who special- 8 ized in illustrating plants and insects to Fmake a self-financed voyage to Suri- nam in 1699 to document the metamor- phosis of exotic butterflies and moths is remarkable enough. For a woman, accompa- MUSEUM HISTORY NATURAL nied only by her 21-year-old daughter, it rep- resents one of the most heroic acts in the history of the natural sciences. Maria Sibylla Merian of Frankfurt was an extraordinary person. She was also responsible for forging a new vision of how the life-cycles of insects could be brought before our eyes. Her ‘ecological’ presentation, which she pioneered in The Wondrous Transformation of Caterpillars and their Remarkable Diet of Flowers in 1679 and 1683, found its finest expression in her Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam in 1714. The eggs, larvae, chrysalises and mature insects are portrayed in living communion with the plant on which their “worms” feed. In her depiction of the moth Arsenura armida on the “Palisade tree” — so called because it provides the thick poles from which “the huts in America are built” — the stages in the life-cycle are interwoven with the plant in a living tapestry. As she explains: “Each year this kind of caterpillar comes three times to this tree; it is yellow with black stripes and decorated with six black spines. When they have reached a third of their final size they shed their skin and become orange- yellow with black spots on their limbs .... Sev- eral days later they shed their skin once more; on 14 April 1700 they turned into chrysalises; on 12 June moths like those emerged. The lower and smaller is the male; the larger and the upper one the female.” Maria Sibylla Merian’s “Palisade tree” (Erythrina fusca) with the moth Arsenura armida, from Her aim was not systematic De Metamorphosibus insectorum Surinamensium, 1714. classification, anatomical description or priority in academic disputes, but to composed with decorative intent, but they working for an audience who would place her conduct us on a visual journey through also frequently embodied implicit narratives world of transformation in the proper theo- the wonders of transformation. that remind us of the passing glories of earth- logical context. She would have known that How was this vision conceived, when it is ly beauty. Maggots create decay at the heart of description, decoration and divine message so different from the taxonomic ‘portraits’ of luscious fruit; leaves are holed by caterpillars; were inseparably conjoined within a temporal organisms found in the standard books? It can and gorgeous butterflies flutter through their framework. be seen as an extension of the kind of art in transitory existence. As she had written in the preface to her which she was steeped. Still-life painting and Should we wonder whether this ‘vanitas’ Transformations, “I moved to present God’s naturalistic illustration were in her blood. motif was relevant to natural history, we need miracles .... Thus do not seek to praise and She was the daughter of Matthias Merian only cite the title of the publication devoted to honour me for this work, but rather God, the Elder, an engraver, illustrator and pub- the mayfly by the microscopist and entomolo- glorifying him as the creator of even the small- lisher, and her stepfather was the still-life gist Jan Swammerdam, A Figure of Man’s Mis- est and most insignificant of these worms.” painter Jacob Marrell. She married the erable Life (1675). Merian is not so explicit, Martin Kemp is in the Department of the History of painter Johann Andreas Graff. The kinds of and the beauty of her observations and vivid Art, University of Oxford, 35 Beaumont Street, still lifes that she learnt to paint with much depictions are sufficient unto themselves. But, Oxford OX1 2PG, UK. skill were replete with descriptive detail and as a pious believer, she knew that she was e-mail: [email protected] NATURE | VOL 396 | 19 NOVEMBER 1998 | www.nature.com Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1998 223